Monthly Archives: January 2015

Consider the motives for the Charlie Hebdo attack with an open mind. What is the outcome and who benefits ? Think critically and consider the possibility that the CIA and MOSSAD prompted, recruited, enabled and orchestrated this slaughter to further their own agendas of the militarization of civilian police forces, expansion surveillance, restriction of civil liberties: free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and to take the world’s attention away from the Israeli War crimes in Gaza, to further demonize islam and ENGINEER THE CONSENT of the public to swallow the New World Empire’s agenda of boots on the ground in Iraq, and garner support for the global ruling class imperial protocols of universal war profiteering and authoritarian repression. Remember 9-11- the same motives apply, and the same characters are pulling the puppet strings and conducting the orchestra. The big picture is ugly. Charlie Hebdo was and is much more than a platform for anti-Muslim cartoons. The anti-Zionist cartoons, and American-British Imperial cartoons were, perhaps the real ‘opinions’ that were vengefully silenced. It is the tyranny of capital and the royal cartels that represent the 1/10th percent of the global ruling class that benefit from the murders. Perfect patsies those oswaldian jihadi wannabee martyrs…hmmm ?

What about all the other school shootings, The Oklahoma City bombing , Boston Marathon bombing, London Train bombing, etc, etc, etc. and now JOHN BONER has invited NETANYAHU to address Congress !!! WTF is it not obvious who the puppet masters are ?

How many other recent assassinations, accidents and fake suicides of popular opposition leaders and journalists and film makers can you think of that are potentially linked ? Historically, we have Admiral James Forrestal, the first secretary of defense, then JFK, RFK, MLK, JFK Jr., Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, RONALD REAGAN, yes George H.W. BUSH wanted to be President sooner, and The Gipper was resistant to being told what to do by the ‘Shadow Government’. Don’t forget Senator Paul Wellstone, Journalist Michael Hastings, former CIA operative and author of CIA-Drug Cartel collusion whistle blowing book The’ Bamboozle’, Phillip Marshall and his two teenage children, Filmaker David Crowley, screenwriter of ‘Gray State’ whose video has been removed from You Tube, try to view ‘Gray State at this site :

Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, James Fetzer, General Stubblebine, Matt Taibbi, Tim Dickinson, Robert Kennedy Jr., cartoonist Victor Juhasz and former Governors Jesse Ventura and Jennifer Granholm would all be dead too, if they were not in asylum or too public to execute cleanly. Expect many more suspiscious assassinations, accidents and faked suicides as well as ever frequent ‘TERROR’ attacks.

This scenario is plausible and in many circles probable, as all global events seem to be choreographed and the propagandized spin is all predicated on expanding the global surveillance police state, the fake war on terror and the rise of the censorship of the totalitarian New World Order. This would not be possible without the entrenched systemic political corruption fostered by the corporate elite. The Global Propaganda War machine marches on. Depose the tyranny, expose the treason and never surrender to injustice. Vive Charlie !

The Charlie Hebdo Cartoons no one is showing you:

Below are cartoons drawn over the past several decades by Cabu, one of the most emblematic cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo (if not the most). Cabu was murdered along with his colleagues this past week. He was 75 years old.

Although no media outlet in the US will show you these images, they can all be found online with a simple Google search.

This cartoon by Cabu criticizes racial profiling, specifically discrimination by the French police against immigrants from North Africa and people of African descent. The caption reads: “No to racist controls [identity checks].”

This cartoon by Cabu depicts and quotes the racist demagogue politician Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Front National party (with the eye patch). The caption reads: “We want to be able to go out in the evening without being afraid.” The armed thugs in the background are racist skinheads and their ilk. The cartoon leaves little doubt as to who is afraid.

This cartoon by Cabu depicts young people of color looking at a Christmas display of a toy costume for a CRS, the riot control force of the French National police, which has long been accused of brutality and racism. The critique here is about the normalization of police control and militarization and its negative impact specifically against young people of African descent.

attribution: None Specified

This cartoon by Cabu meant to raise the alarm at the rise in popularity of far-right, anti-immigrant politician Marine Le Pen and her Front National party (founded by her father, the notorious right-wing racist and xenophobic politician Jean-Marie Le Pen). The captions read on the left “Disappointed by Sarkozysm” [ie. disappointed by the policies of the Center Right politics of former French president Sarkozy] and on the right “Disappointed by Hollandism” [ie. disappointed by the policies of the Center Left politics of current French president Hollande.] Marine Le Pen is cast as the “hostess”. A rough translation of her caption would be: “Move it you red, white & blue peckerheads!”

This cartoon by Cabu criticizes the size of the military budgets across Europe. The captions read at the top, “Those clowns that suck the blood of Europe,” and at bottom, “Let’s put the military budgets on a diet!”

This cartoon by Cabu ruthlessly criticizes the French military. The caption reads: “14 Juillet [France’s Independence Day], the killers’ holiday.”

This cartoon by Cabu does not require translation.

This cartoon by Cabu was published in 1979 in the antiwar journal of the Pacifist Union. While this specific image might not have been published in Charlie Hebdo (I don’t have access to their archives), it strikingly conveys Cabu’s lifelong antiwar and anticolonialist politics, which always fit right in at Charlie Hebdo (and were shared by the majority of the journalists and cartoonists there). The caption reads: “France doesn’t have oil, but she has an army!”

#JeSuisCharlie, #JeSuisMusulman: contradiction?

By now we’ve all heard. Gunmen today shot dead 12 people at the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, apparently while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad!” Editor Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier is among the dead; he had received death threats in the past and was living under police protection. Charlie Hebdo’s offices were bombed in 2011, after the magazine released an issue in which the Prophet Muhammed was satirically billed as “guest editor.” The issue included cartoons lampooning Muhammed and was redubbed “Charia Hebdo,” a reference to Shariah law. The new attack is said to be the deadliest in France since 1961, when rightists who opposed Algerian independence bombed a train, killing 28 people. (BBC News, NYT)

The New York Times headline states all too obviously, “Paris Attack Reflects a ‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe,” quoting Peter Neumann of the UK-based International Center for the Study of Radicalisation: “This is a dangerous moment for European societies. With increasing radicalization among supporters of jihadist organizations and the white working class increasingly feeling disenfranchised and uncoupled from elites, things are coming to a head.” The example is cited of the recent anti-immigrant, anti-Islam rallies in Germany, under the banner of Pegida—Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.

[I]n the moments after the news broke about the Charlie Hebdo massacre, I found it impossible to ignore a sinking feeling: the recognition that we were being pulled further into a cycle of distrust and division.

It grew as I read through the responses online. The straightforward reaction from far-right extremists was the hashtag #killallmuslims, which would have been easy to ignore as empty words if it hadn’t reminded me of the firebombing of mosques after the Lee Rigby murder.

Less violent but still divisive was the way the attack was depicted as a battle between Islam and freedom of speech, or between Muslims and satire—a clash-of-civilisations argument that splits the world neatly into “them” and “us”, by ignoring the staggering death toll of terrorist attacks abroad (most recently the massacre of schoolchildren in Pakistan).

There is some important truth here. We have also emphasized that the principal concern of jihadist franchises like ISIS and the various Qaeda affiliates is the struggle within Islam against secularism and internal heresy such as Shia, and only secondarily the jihad against the West. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, contrary to the Western media “narrative.” And indeed patronizing demands on Muslims to repudiate such extremism is a form of stigmatization which is sure to backfire—especially as no such demands are placed on Jews (by mainstream voices, anyway) to repudiate Israeli state terror.

But this also obscures a point: in resisting the “clash-of-civilizations narrative,” we must advocate an analysis that emphasizes the clashes within “civilizations.” There are Muslims, and non-Muslims living within Muslim-majority nations and communities, who oppose the ever-more-reactionary rule of political Islam—just as there are white Europeans who stand up to the current paroxysm of xenophobia and Islamophobia. Thousands of Germans have taken to the streets to repudiate the ugly Pegida. But those in the Middle East and Muslim communities in the West who similarly stand up to the increasingly hegemonic Islamist reaction are too often portrayed by “progressives” as dupes or agents of imperialism.

In previous irruptions of the interminable cartoon controversy, “progressives” have repeatedly raised the absurd fallacy that freedom of speech is a scheme to allow the white male power structure to shout down the rest of us. A case in point this time around is the commentary of one Jacob Canfield on the Hooded Utilitarian blog. His title concedes: “Free Speech Does Not Mean Freedom From Criticism; You can condemn the attacks without embracing the cartoons.” But he doesn’t write like he means it about the “free speech” part. He says Charb “comes across as a racist asshole” for having dared to state, “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me… I live under French law. I don’t live under Koranic law.”

As we have noted, an inherent right to blasphemy was precisely the position that progressives took in the controversy over art photographer Andres Serrano‘s “Piss Christ.” It’s true that Christians are not oppressed and marginalized in the West as Muslims are—but does that entirely justify the double standard? Would progressives defend intentionally offensive anti-Muslim art in countries where Christians are oppressed and marginalized by Muslim majorities, such as Syria, Iraq, Egypt? How many “progressives” who protest the sophomoric humor of Charlie Hebdo came to the defense of Gillian Gibbons, the British schoolteacher imprisoned in Sudan a few years back for innocently naming a class teddy bear “Mohammed”? How many have opposed the ugly Jew-hating cartoons that appear regularly in the Arab press? No, that is left to be exploited by the Zionists and Islamophobes. And around it goes.

There will be some progress in this world when Jews protest Israeli state terror and Muslims protest Islamist terror—and not in response to condescending demands that they do so, but because it is necessary to oppose atrocities committed in the name of one’s own group identity. The Germans who are protesting Pegida get this. So too did the NRIs (non-resident Indians, presumably including some of Hindu background) who protested Narendra Modi on his much-hyped US tour last year. The dueling Twitter hashtags #JeSuisCharlie (I am Charlie) and #JeSuisMusulman (I am Muslim) suggest a pathological dichotomy: we can extend solidarity both to artists and satirists (no matter how sophomoric) and to Muslims under xenophobic attack.

At the rally this evening in the bitter cold of New York’s Union Square, a crowd of mostly French protesters held matching mass-produced signs reading “Je Suis Charlie.” Amid the crowd was one young man, seemingly of Arab background, who held a hand-written sign that read “I am Charlie” in Arabic.

Here is one of the cartoons that got the magazine into trouble. It is captioned “If Muhammed came back…” It shows an ISIS militant in the act of decapitating a bearded man in white robe and turban. The victim shouts, “I’m the prophet, you asshole,” while his killer says back, “Shut your trap, infidel.”

In other words, exactly what Muslims have been saying about ISIS from day one—that it does not represent Islam, and is inimical to its true teachings. Are the Charlie cartoons really as uniformly “Islamophobic” as critics portray?

Painful but hardly surprising that the left is displaying typical intellectual cowardice on the Paris massacre, even proclaiming “I am not Charlie.” The Jacobin response is predictable, rejecting the word “terrorism” as a “narrative device” (God, how we hate the word “narrative”) and “inherently normative” (huh?), and decrying “solidarity with what is frankly a racist publication.” The writer, Richard Seymour, issues the requisite disavowal of the notion that journalists are “legitimate targets” (gee, thanks), but he offers no critique of political Islam. His argument basically comes down to the notion that CH brought it on themselves, and tough luck.

This is stated even more explicitly on Medium.com, which asserts: “This Attack Was Nothing To Do With Free Speech—It Was About War.” We knew that was coming. The inevitable “not about free speech” line. What does that even mean, apart from (stated more honestly) we don’t care about free speech for people we don’t like? The invocation of the word “war” is particularly ironic, given that CH was targeted with actual deadly violence. The writer, Asghar Bukhari, protests that some “white dude” or “Zionist” will accuse him of “justifying” the attack. But if his screed isn’t a justification, what is it? Even if his dubious case that CH is an organ of war propaganda holds up, what can we infer from the assertion that the attack “was nothing to do with free speech” other than the notion that CH was a “legitmate target”?

Contrast the truly courageous editorial from The Forward, a pro-Zionist voice that all us lefties are supposed to hate. Their headline is “Why Charlie Hebdo Must Be Free to Offend All—Even Us,” and they actually reprint various cartoons from CH portraying Israelis as murderous thugs. A compilation of CH cartoons on Gawker clearly demonstrates that Jews and Catholics as well as Muslims were targets of their unsparing pens. The Toronto Star reprints a 2013 statement from the late Charb, “No, Charlie Hebdo isn’t Racist,” in which he reminds readers that the zine’s roots are on the left: “Charlie Hebdo is the child of May ’68, of the spirit of freedom and insolence… The Charlie Hebdo of the 1970s helped to form the critical spirit of a generation. By mocking the powers and the powerful. By laughing, sometimes uproariously, at the ills of the world. And always, always, always by defending the human individual and his universal values…”

OpenDemocracy scoffs: “[I]t is amazing how many Islamophobic and far right people are declaring their love for a magazine that until recently they would criticize as a ‘communist rag’ (after Charlie’s biting satire mocked their own heroes, from Jesus Christ to Marine Le Pen). These are the heroic defenders of free speech, like Geert Wilders, who want to ban the Quran because it incites violence.”

The one unequivocally racist CH cartoon we’ve found is this one, which shows pregnant Boko Haram rape victims demanding their welfare checks. That isn’t poking fun at religious orthodoxy, but the victims thereof. Not kosher. So has CH drifted from its leftist roots to line up with the xenophobe right? While most “leftists” have, in reaction, drifted from their secular roots to line up with the Islamist right? Once again… Are we the only ones who feel like we’re through the looking glass here?

Maybe not. The most plausible apologia for this seemingly appalling cartoon was just posted by a French friend on Facebook: “[I]t draws a paralell with demonstrations that took place in France, when the government wanted to limit the allocations for children, depending on the family revenue. It makes fun of people protesting when they have so much, while others have no rights in their country and are victims of the worst abuses. These are not the victims of boko haram who are mocked here, but the prosperous catholic families who were making a scandal about having their social prestations calculated depending of their income.”

Maybe not. The above interpretation is shared by blogger Nott George Sabra, who finds the seemingly ugly cartoon “iwas actually mocking the indignation of the privileged and well-off in France who decried the government’s decision to end benefits for children of the rich…”

Unhappily but inevitably, the consistently appalling Glenn Greenwald has weighed in on the Paris massacre. His piece on The Intercept is sarcastically dubbed “In Solidarity with a Free Press: Some More Blasphemous Cartoons,” and gleefully reproduces a slew of ugly anti-Semitic propaganda caricatures culled from the Internet. This is fucked up at least three ways.

1. If he’s trying to make the point that it is unacceptable to reprint Islamophobic cartoons as a show of “solidarity” with CH, this is a funny way of doing it. By Greenwald’s logic, it is evidently acceptable to reprint anti-Semitic cartoons to similarly make a point. What, no double standards here!

2. Greenwald seems not to have noticed The Forward editorial which did not reprint Islamophobic cartoons from CH, but courageously reprinted one of their anti-Israeli cartoons! The difference is that Greenwald ran anti-Semitic cartoons in a paradoxical argument against free speech, while The Forward ran theirs in defense of free speech. Greenwald was essentially saying, “Oh yeah? Is this free speech too?” The Forward was essentially saying: “Yup.” Too bad Greenwald wasn’t listening.

3. Greenwald seems not to get that there is a distinction between the blasphemous and the racist. Cartoons that poke fun at the Prophet Muhammed or Jesus Christ are blasphemous. Cartoons that poke fun at Muslims or Jews are racist (or whatever the equivalent word is when talking about religion rather than “race,” although these are obviously related concepts where anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are concerned). Most of the CH cartoons are blasphemous; only some (arguably) cross the line into racism. In contrast, all of the cartoons Greenwald reproduces are racist—to the core.

A case in point is this cartoon that Greenwald reproduces from the always-ugly Latuff, which shows a globe-headed figure representing the world laughing at “cartoons of Muhammed” but outraged at “cartoons of Holocaust.” There is no equivalency here. One is poking fun at religion. The other is poking fun at victims of genocide. Do you understand the distinction, Latuff and Greenwald?

Veteran counterculture comedian Paul Krassner in this online interview says: “Irreverence is my only sacred cow. On the other hand, I don’t want victims to be the target of my humor.” A rather clear and critical distinction that eveyone seems to be losing sight of…

It is receiving alarmingly little coverage in English, but Raw Story reports a wave of attacks on Muslim targets across France overnight. Three blank grenades were thrown at a mosque shortly after midnight in the city of Le Mans, west of Paris. A bullet hole was also found in a window of the mosque. In the Port-la-Nouvelle district near Narbonne in southern France, several shots were fired in the direction of a Muslim prayer hall shortly after evening prayers. The hall was empty, the local prosecutor said. An explosion at a kebab shop near a mosque in the eastern French town of Villefranche-sur-Saone this morning also left no casualties. Local prosecutors have described it as a “criminal act.”

This comes just months after a wave of attacks on Jewish targets in France. How much overlap will there be in those who protest the current anti-Muslim attacks and those who protested last year’s anti-Jewish attacks? All too little. So few seem to understand what we have repeatedly pointed out: anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are genetically linked phenomena.

Here we go again. While the above-cited “leftist” idiots completely fail to acknowledge the problem of political Islam, now we have an exemplar of the opposite error. George Packer in the New Yorkerdoes call out political Islam—but explicitly denies the critical context for it. He opens:

The murders today in Paris are not a result of France’s failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They’re not about French military action against the Islamic State in the Middle East, or the American invasion of Iraq before that. They’re not part of some general wave of nihilistic violence in the economically depressed, socially atomized, morally hollow West—the Paris version of Newtown or Oslo. Least of all should they be “understood” as reactions to disrespect for religion on the part of irresponsible cartoonists.

You know, way back in the aftermath of the 2005 London attacks, we had to call out both those on the “left” who refuse to see the threat of political Islam and those on the right who resuse to see how the post-9-11 hyper-interventionism and the rise of the Western security state are part of the dystopian dynamic. We have had to make the point since then as well. As we said after the new 2013 London attacks: We are really tired of having to make the same point over and over.

Reuters reported Sept. 21, 2012 that French authorities banned protests against cartoons in Charlie Hebdo denigrating the Prophet. Interior Minister Manuel Valls said prefects throughout the country had orders to prohibit any demonstrations over the issue and to crack down if the ban was challenged. “There will be strictly no exceptions. Demonstrations will be banned and broken up,” he said.

Mind you, this was in the midst of the violent protests throughout the Middle East over the Innocence of Muslims video. But still… Sheds a paradoxical light on the whole issue of free speech in France… We will also note the banning of pro-Palestine marches in Paris during last year’s Gaza CONFLICT.

A notorious poster for the 1938 Nazi art exhibition on “Degenerate Art” depicts a stereotypical image of a Jew at left, suggesting that modern art was a conspiracy aimed at undermining German culture. At right, the Jewish facial features merge with those of an African-looking sculpture. (Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany)

In the wake of the massacre of 12 employees by terrorist gunmen, on Monday the surviving Charlie Hebdo editorialists published a new issue whose cover depicts a weeping Muhammad under the headline “All Is Forgiven.”

The turbaned prophet also holds a sign saying, “I am Charlie” in French, using the slogan taken up by those who have protested the attack on the magazine. To see the image, click on this link.

There’s no justification for horrific violence unleashed on Charlie Hebdo, or the subsequent bloody hostage-taking and siege at a Jewish delicatessen in Paris.

At the same time, it is possible to understand that images such as those published by the satirical newspaper could be deeply hurtful to Muslim minority populations that feel disenfranchised and isolated in European countries.

View full sizeThe Nazi propaganda poster, “Behind the Enemy Powers: the Jew,” represents the “Jewish financier” manipulating the Allies, Great Britain, United States and Soviet Union. On view in the Maltz Museum exhibition “State of Deception,” the poster shows how Nazi propagandists frequently depicted “the Jew” as a conspirator plotting world domination by acting behind the scenes in nations at war with Germany. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Helmut Eschwege

Here’s what troubles me: Beyond violating the Islamic prohibition against depicting their prophet, the Charlie Hebdo caricature of Muhammad employs exaggerated ethnic features that, to my eye, come uncomfortably close to racial caricatures of Jews used by the Nazis to create a social and political environment conducive to the “Final Solution.”

The show, which feels electrifyingly relevant, is filled with reproductions of Nazi hate posters that caricature stereotypical and supposedly Semitic facial features such as long noses; thick, fleshy lips; large, bulging eyes; and copious facial hair.

Anti-Semitism, in popular parlance, refers strictly to Jews, but the Hebdo cover is a reminder that Arabs are also Semites.

The Hebdo cover drawing of Muhammad, sketched by the artist known by the nickname Luz, employs exaggerated facial features, drawn in the light, sketchy, humorous style, that nevertheless resonates uncomfortably with the history of anti-Semitism in France and caricatures of Jews used by the Nazis to pave the way for the Holocaust.

Of course, Charlie Hebdo is a private publication catering to a (previously) smallish audience in a democratic European nation. It has every right to publish whatever it wants, within the limits of French law. The Nazis, on the other hand, promulgated their anti-Semitic imagery in a totalitarian state bent on persecution and genocide.

I’m not arguing here for censorship or limitations on free speech, or curtailment of Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish. I am arguing instead for a more nuanced reading of the visual message the paper is broadcasting in its depictions of Muhammad, and by extension, Muslims.

The question raised by the cover – however playfully satirical it may be – is when it is justifiable or wise to caricature the physiognomy of racial or ethnic groups, particularly when a double standard seems to exist.

View full sizeThe 1938 “Degenerate Art” poster, shown here in its entirety, exemplifies anti-Semitic caricature as employed by Nazi propagandists, but is not part of the current Maltz Museum exhibition on the topic.Museum Fur Kunst Und Gewerbe, Hamburg

If Western society refuses to condone hate imagery when it focuses on Jews, and if Holocaust denial is a crime in certain countries – as it is in Germany and France – it would seem that hurtful caricatures of other ethnic or groups, whether in depictions of Muhammad or African-Americans or even Chief Wahoo, the mascot of the Cleveland Indians, ought to be questioned, if not avoided.

Defenders of Charlie Hebdo have argued that cultural politics in France are complicated, and that the country historically has tolerated inflammatory imagery in the context of satire.

In a “Talk of the Town” piece in the Jan. 19 issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik likened the work of Charlie Hebdo’s satirists to that of the crusading 19th-century artist Honore Daumier. Gopnik also placed the newspaper within “the inextinguishable French tradition of dissent” that includes novelist and journalist Emile Zola.

The problem with this analysis is that Daumier and Zola afflicted the powerful and the comfortable. Zola, in particular, famously championed the cause of Alfred Dreyfus, the French army officer falsely accused of spying for Germany in 1894 and imprisoned on Devil’s Island.

Zola risked his reputation in defense of a member of a religious and ethnic minority that had been persecuted for centuries in Europe and in France, a country with a long and troubling history of anti-Semitism.

Charlie Hebdo is known for being an equal-opportunity offender that has mocked Jesus and Moses, along with Mohammed. But it’s significant that it is presenting negatively stereotypical depictions of Arabs or people of Middle Eastern descent, at a time of widespread nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe.

That doesn’t sound like something Zola would have done. Yet despite the widespread discussion over Charlie Hebdo’s cover art, few if any Western commenters have discussed the specific style of the image and its depiction of a Muslim “type.”

Naturally, opinions differ: Margaret Sullivan, public editor of the New York Times, said in an online column Wednesday that “The cartoon itself, while it may disturb the sensibilities of a small percentage of Times readers, is neither shocking nor gratuitously offensive.”

View full sizeThe 1943 Nazi propaganda poster, “He is to blame for the war!” designed by the artist known as Mjolnir [Hans Schweitzer], exemplifies how the party sought to provoke hatred of Germany’s Jews by portraying them as enemies guilty of warmongering and betraying Germany from within. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

Interestingly, though, a new line of commentary on the Hebdo furor is emerging in which writers such as Al Jazeera’s Sharif Nashashibi are decrying what they see as a double standard confronting Muslims in European countries.

Charlie Hebdo, as Nashashibi points out, fired a columnist in 2009 for an essay the publication deemed anti-Semitic (in this usage, anti-Jewish). So there appears to be a limit to what the newspaper considers justifiable in the pursuit of humor.

I asked Ellen Rudolph, director of the Maltz Museum, for her thoughts on the similarity of the Charlie Hebdo cover drawing to the Nazi anti-Semitic posters on view at her museum.

“The Charlie Hebdo situation shows us how important free speech is and how a multitude of voices must be allowed to coexist peacefully,” she said. “‘State of Deception’ shows what happens when those voices are silenced.”

Rudolph argues that consumers of media of all kinds need to be literate and critical of what they see and read, which to her “means understanding where messages come from and what motivates them.”

She also said the answer to objectionable speech is not censorship, but more speech.

“We have to have the ability to take a stand against something that is potentially harmful,” she said.

In the spirit of Rudolph’s comments, my view is that the Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Muhammad is offensive, pointlessly inflammatory and indicative of a double standard over caricatures of Muslims and Jews.

It is frightening to admit that when debating the options for POTUS, one must consider that the only likely puppet candidates that the New World Empire will allow to be nominated, are familiar names pictured above. If Knowing that your vote in this poll is far more important than your vote for CEO of America incorporated, that there really is only one fascist political party, and that your life has been reduced to that of a slave of capitalist imperialism, propaganda and disinformation, and that you and your family will be a victim of universal war profiteering and perpetual debt for the rest of your life, offers you little comfort, then start the revolution now. Get out in the streets and demand an end to the global tyranny.

I am sure that Israel, the CIA, NSA,MOSSAD, Homeland Security, GCHQ, MI-6, The FED,The Bilderberg Group, Carlysle Group, Berkshire Hathaway, Wal Mart, Mc Donalds Military-Industrial-Banking complex, Monsanto, GE, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Royal BP, Royal Dutch Shell, McDonnel-Douglas, Raytheon, Boeing, GM, Goldman-Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, AIG, Citi Group, UBS, Deutch Bank, Baron Rothschild and the Royal families of Europe, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and South Korea would be happy with either corporate candidate. The ruling class has cast their votes, and it does not matter what you need or want for America. It does not matter what puppet sits on the throne, as long as it they are loyal to Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the blueprint for the New World Order.

January 13, 2015 “ICH” – Recent events, such as the overthrow of the government in Ukraine, the secession of Crimea and its decision to join the Russian Federation, the subsequent military campaign against civilians in Eastern Ukraine, western sanctions against Russia, and, most recently, the attack on the ruble, have caused a certain phase transition to occur within Russian society, which, I believe, is very poorly, if at all, understood in the west. This lack of understanding puts Europe at a significant disadvantage in being able to negotiate an end to this crisis.

Whereas prior to these events the Russians were rather content to consider themselves “just another European country,” they have now remembered that they are a distinct civilization, with different civilizational roots (Byzantium rather than Rome)—one that has been subject to concerted western efforts to destroy it once…

Score one for the little guy. Voters on the Hawaiian island of Maui passed the nation’s first-ever ballot initiative targeting genetically engineered food following a campaign in which opponents of the measure, including corporate giants Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences, outspent supporters by a ratio of 87 to 1.

The initiative temporarily bans the farming of GMO crops in Maui County until the county conducts an analysis of the health effects of genetically modified farming and foods.

“I feel that this is a really strong message to the entire agrochemical industry in the state of Hawaii that we are no longer going to sit idly by and watch them expand their operations without the kinds of regulations that ensure the health and safety of people across Hawaii,” Ashley Lukens, director of the Hawaii chapter of the non-profit the Center for Food Safety…

On Oahu, Kauai, Maui, and Molokai, chemical and biotechnology companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont, Dow Chemical, Bayer, and BASF are using prime agricultural land, taking advantage of Hawaii’s isolation and year-round growing season, in order to field test crops that have been genetically engineered to withstand greater applications of pesticides.

Despite public health concerns and contamination of natural resources, the State of Hawaii has taken no action to regulate the activities of biotechnology companies performing open-air testing on genetically engineered seed and synthetic pesticides.

So, What’s Home Rule?

Kauai, Maui and Hawaii Counties have asserted their county’s authority to create policies that address these issues and protect the safety and health of their residents and land. Otherwise known as “Home Rule,” Hawaii…

Death has come to the beautiful island of Molokai, long considered an “old Hawaiian” paradise complete with waterfalls, lush rain forests and sprawling hills. It came in the form of a mighty Trojan Horse promising jobs and prosperity to the island’s small population of 7,500. Image credit: occupy-monsanto.com

The exquisite island has become a laboratory and the islanders are being treated like lab rats.

Monsanto has set up shop, shrouded by fences and no trespassing signs. Almost 2,000 acres of Molokai’s paradise has been taken over by the biotech titan’s Bt corn crops. These patented genes produce a substance that prevents and destroys pests. The Bt toxin is engineered into corn crops, allowing farmers to control pests without spraying as many pesticides.

When the pesticides are sprayed, workers wear head to toe protective gear, including respirators. Nearby residents are not provided with such equipment and have no option but to breathe…